


No one is irreplaceable, they said

by AmyWilldo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 12:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17643017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyWilldo/pseuds/AmyWilldo
Summary: Teleportation is death, they said. It doesn't really matter, as long as you get your work done.





	No one is irreplaceable, they said

You pack the tablet back into its case, the stylo into its suit pocket, and the whole thing away into its rack in the meeting room, ready for the next user. You’ve saved to the cloud the draft that was not in any way useful, and your short notes, on steps forward. You’ll be having words, kind and constructive words because the junior who prepared it needs to learn, she’s young and inexperienced, and it was half your fault that you’re out with the expert with a document you didn’t look at. It’s a rambling stream of consciousness, more suited to a television drama than an actual draft, but it’s not your style to blame juniors. You don’t enjoy making young ones cry, and you try not to. You thank the expert politely for her time, it wasn’t her fault the questions were off base, and you’re going to have to rely on her goodwill to give you another appointment slot once you are properly prepared. She’s curt in her dismissal and you feel her frustration at the loss of the potentially productive day, but you can’t give it back. She’ll have to make up her lost time to her team, and your company or your client, depending on your partner’s call, will have to make up the difference in money.

The expert leaves, and you finish your coffee, black the way you like it, cold in the way you don’t, and do likewise. There’s a street beggar, and it’s going to be a cold night here, and you can’t use the local currency at home, and he blesses you, and you feel awkward. But good. You like to feel good.

The train trip is airconditioned, and you’re warm, but not too warm. You’re soothed by the white noise. The protestors, as the train draws into the teleport station, barely register. To the extent they do, you pity them. You’re confident that if they had the access, the money, the power, to use the teleport, they wouldn’t be holding the “Teleportation is Murder” signs, they’d be joining the queue. 

The security queue inside the station’s not bad this evening. You nod to a guy you recall seeing at company drinks, give him a half smile, comrades at arms of a sort. He blanks you, staring through at first, and then politely nodding, because that’s what travellers do. James, or Ben or Sam, or one of those names. You’ll look him up in the office directory. It’s good to have more connections that travel. 

The security team swabs you and you wait passively for the clearance. Across the way, your colleague is being taken into the screening room for, presumably, an internal. Security’s tight at the moment, because of the protestor who took out a station with a swallowed emitter, unidentified to the travelling public. At least you’ve dodged that particular kind of unpleasantness this trip. The security guard thanks you, and you thank her. She’s just doing her job, and you appreciate efficiency. Security’s never bothered you, for you have nothing to hide.

You disrobe in the privacy chamber adjacent to the teleportal, and wait for the light to flash green. This will be your tenth trip. It’s almost routine. The first time, you’d read too many of the placards on the way in, and it felt like you were entering your own coffin, courting your own death in the way the protestors claimed. You’d met your HR rep, who walked you through the process, although you’re certain that his script was vetted to ensure maximum coverage for your company’s liability policy, ticking all the boxes, and to tell you more about the business case, the time savings, the opportunity cost savings. He’d given you a list of all your colleagues who’d already teleported. The list included your immediate boss, and her superior. Nothing to worry about, they'd said, emphatically. Career opportunity, they’d mentioned, more than once.

Despite that, you’d done your own research, in the same way you’d do if preparing for a case, although on your own time, of course. The company’s time is precious. Your physics research itself is a little more than a decade or so out of date, but the journals that weren’t paywalled had given you a minimal rundown that seemed reassuring. A little bit of choosing to observe at one end of the teleport rather than the other, a collapse of probabilities at a sub-atomic level, a disruption of some entangled particles over there, and a mass energy conversion at one end to dispose of atoms and energy mass the other to re write you at the other, and Bertie Einstein’s your uncle, presto chango you’re teleported. There’s not really a clone, and no one really dies, that’s all populist rubbish. The universe is recreated at a quantum level all the time, and consciousness is a product of a body, after all, and once the body reappears, you will too. In a footnote, you see a reference to Feynman, and that hooks you, you’ve always had a soft spot for a physicist with a bongo. You didn’t bother checking the math proof linked further down, because it’s too long, and the clock is ticking, after all, even if it’s your clock, your life, not the billable one, it’s all precious. Just some time is more precious than others. 

The first time, you’d anticipated pain, because no one had thought to tell you about the stasis field switched on before the teleport process. Now, you look forward to it. The out that’s more out than anaesthetic, than even the best sleep in the most comfortable and ultimate climate controlled of sleeping chambers paid for by the most cashed up of all the company’s clients. This time’s no exception. The chamber, you think as your consciousness flickers out, is as cold as a grave, even if it isn’t one.

You wake, and you can tell you’re back in Sydney by the humidity crawling up your skin, even in the recovery chamber. Clothes, on. Shoes, tied. Communicator is logged into with your thumb, all normal. 

Have a nice day, the security staff member says and you want to punch him in the throat, just for breathing. It’s a normal reaction for you, you hate security even if you have nothing to hide because it’s none of their damn business, and you lock your hands behind your back, as usual, because you can’t embroil the company in a nasty security incident, that would indeed be career limiting, and you wait for the urge to pass. All normal. 

A man in the same clothes as yours nods at you and you don’t know why and you frown. 

In the office, your junior apologises profusely, and brings you a coffee, flat white the way you like it, but he spills it across your desk light brown foam and the smell taunts you. You tell him that his affidavit was awful, his coordination worse, and to get out, that he doesn’t work on your team any more, he’s off the project. You don’t believe in giving people second chances. He should have known what he was doing. He’s an adult, and he should know better than to cry in front of a colleague. It’s not the first time you’ve made juniors cry, and you suspect you have a name for it. That, in its way, pleases you. 

The document, when you pull it up, is covered in your red pen stylus annotations and you can’t face it tonight. You respond to emails, on automatic, curt, yes, no, ask Sam, or delete. You shut down the system.

On the way out of the office, you notice that your name is misspelt on your office door and your security pass. 

At home, your pet fern is dead, and your roommate has reset all the channels to cooking shows. In your closet, your shirts have been reorganised bright to pale, instead of summer and winter ends, and you shut the closet. Perform your bedtime routine. On your back, on your bed, you stare at the ceiling and wait for sleep to take you. 

This is your life now. Although it’s not clear whether it was your life before. Or will be after the next teleport. It doesn’t really matter, as long as the project is right.

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Heinlein, and all his zombies.


End file.
